Entities with substantial printing demands typically use a production printer. A production printer is a high-speed printer used for volume printing (e.g., one hundred pages per minute or more). Production printers include continuous-forms printers that print on a web of print media stored on a large roll.
A production printer typically includes a localized print controller that controls the overall operation of the printing system, and a print engine (sometimes referred to as an “imaging engine” or a “marking engine”). The print engine includes one or more printhead assemblies, with each assembly including a printhead controller and a printhead (or array of printheads). An individual printhead includes multiple (e.g., hundreds of) tiny nozzles that are operable to discharge ink as controlled by the printhead controller. A printhead array is formed from multiple printheads that are spaced in series across the width of the web of print media.
While the printer prints, the web is quickly passed underneath the nozzles, which discharge ink onto the web at intervals to form pixels. In order to ensure that the web is consistently positioned underneath the nozzles, steering systems can be used to align the web laterally with respect to its direction of travel. However, steering systems often use even-profile rollers that have little positional control of the lateral movements of web traveling through a continuous-forms printing system.